


Light

by Bayyvon



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn, Smoker!Bucky, Smoker!Reader
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-13 23:34:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14123262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bayyvon/pseuds/Bayyvon
Summary: Bucky meets his downstairs neighbor.





	1. {One}

Bucky blinks. 

The lifeless darkness of his ceiling had done nothing but frustrate him for hours. 

Or maybe it had been mere minutes.

The angry red numbers on the clock beside his bed read _**5:15.**_ He wishes the numbers weren’t red, maybe if they were green or blue or white they wouldn’t laugh at him and spit in his face when he rolled over on sleepless nights to greet them.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and makes his way towards his small apartment’s wrought iron balcony. Manages to blearily grope his cigarettes from the coffee table as he passes. 

He uses his ~~real~~

~~flesh~~

right hand to quietly open and close the door and finds himself overexposed in the night air in just a white tank and grey sweats. The cigarette he lights is familiar at least. Sometimes it helps him feel connected with James. Other times it helps him feel connected to reality. Camels hadn’t changed, he knew that much. 

_(The gas station cashier had bawked at him when he asked for them. Apparently there are **fifty** different kinds now. So he asked for Camel Originals and prayed he was right.)_

He flicks his thumb and watches the ash fall gracelessly towards the empty streets. The city before him is still lit brilliantly, even at this hour. Much more quiet than the usual hubbub and clamor. 

He hears the door of the balcony below his click open and shut at an unapologetic volume. His downstairs neighbor sighs. Curses. 

He flicks the he burnt down filter outwards, and turns to go back inside.

“Hey neighbor,” a female voice calls. “Can I borrow your lighter?”

Bucky digs around for it in his pocket, and begins to head down the steps when he remembers he isn’t wearing a shirt. At least, one that hides the disfigurement where graft meets machine. He’s nothing like some of the runners that begin to dot the streets below. Can’t be a _regular_ guy. Can’t be like James who (he assumed) would shamelessly tug cotton over his head and let onlookers fawn. So he opts for sticking his unmarred hand through the bars and dropping it down. He stares out at the city on crossed arms and wonders what the day will hold. _Sleep, if he’s lucky. Then again… his luck had never been_ **great.**

A few clicks later, his neighbor is heading up the stairs that connect their balconies and he’s turned his head, about to stop her, tell her to keep it he would buy another they were a dollar really it’s not a big deal— when she strides onto his balcony and meets his eye. She’s beautiful. And she’s smiling at him and something deep down in his chest stirs. He had heard her shuffling around below him in the months since he had moved in, but had never expected to see her, much less interact with her. 

“Thanks. I’m Y/N.”

“Bucky.” He nods at her and turns back to the lights that shimmer and twist before him as the dawn broke. Like a mirage. Which is what he half expects her to be when he risks a glance to his right. But she’s still there, tobacco burning between her index and middle fingers as she watches the sky twist colors like an experimental artist. _With him._

The words tumble out before he can stop them. “You’re not scared of me?”

“No.”

“Why?” He blurts and immediately wants to clap a hand over his mouth duct tape it shut anything to stop the words from spilling from his tongue seemingly without his vocation.

“You haven’t given me any reason to be.” She says simply. Like it’s a fact. Like he was just her upstairs neighbor and not someone who had decades of blood on his hands. Not James the War Hero or the Assassin Winter Soldier. Just her neighbor. Bucky. He doesn’t know whether or not to be grateful. 

In the end, he gets his lighter back after the sky had turned to a brisk, robins egg blue and they had both extinguished two more cigarettes in peaceful silence.

She waves goodbye and says “Back to the grind. See ya around, Bucky.”

He wonders if that would be true. A hint of a smile tugs at his lips as he returns inside.


	2. {two}

Y/N flicks her gaze between the book she held in her hand and the machine before her.  She was waiting (albeit a little impatiently) for the last spin cycle to begin so she could switch loads over.

She scans the page before her, trying to remember where she had left off and finds her thoughts wandering to yesterday morning. She sighs, dogearing her page and setting down her book. 

Her whites still tumble around in the small window and she picks up the notebook beside her to start a journal entry about her encounter with her upstairs neighbor. Bucky.  His name is flourished between her script and she feels her cheeks heat. She had seen him before, sure, but never close enough to actually _look_. 

They had locked eyes briefly, blue glass etched with dark fragments of fear and an underlying tenderness that made her heart stutter in her chest. Not out of fear, but out of something softer. Something that had made her chest bloom with… what? She hadn’t been sure. All Y/N knew was that when he had looked at her through his lashes, hair falling askew from where he had haphazardly pulled it up, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, she had to say _something_.

She flips the page and scrawls: 

**Bucky Barnes: a list**

* * *

Buck groans softly. He readjusts his clothes basket under his arm and curses.

**To whom it may concern:**

**The laundry facilities are currently closed for maintenance, we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.**

**Thank you for your understanding.**

“You gotta be _fuckin’_ kidding me.”

There was a laundry mat a couple blocks over, he knew. But that made him nervous. The only other clean shirt he had was much too heavy for the warm spring air. Would he risk exposing himself for the simple pleasure of clean, breathable clothes?

He probably _should_. Dirty clothes did nothing but make him take steps backwards. To Europe and the army and—

Laundry mat it is. He shoves away the thoughts that threatened to debilitate his outing, decides to come back to them later. When he didn’t smell like sweat and tobacco.

The afternoon sun blinds him when he steps outside, mesh bag slung over his shoulder as he made his way east. He could sort of make out the top of the sign from outside his complex, but it was at least a five minute jog. And today was his rest day. So a fifteen minute walk would have to suffice. Silently curses whatever god thought it was amusing to mess with him.

Bucky tries to ignore the eyes boring into the back of his head as he walked, head down, hands shoved deeply into his pockets.

Almost wishes now that he had grabbed the thermal. 

Thinks it might be a small blessing when the arching windows of the RAINBOW LAUNDRY SERVICE come into view. The sign is old— he thinks dryly that he might be as old as this building. Which makes him laugh, just a little. 

The bell above the door twinkles upon his entrance, and he finds no one else to be around. The smell of burnt coffee and floral soap overwhelm his senses. A red leather bound notebook sits on the end table closest to him, atop withered and sun faded tabloids dated 2009. A book rests in a plastic chair and he finds himself fidgeting when he realizes that someone else is here. Hopefully they wouldn’t know him, or pay enough mind to even look at him. He’s got his back turned, bag near his feet and feeding dollars into the machine that spat out faded quarters when he hears a voice he knows. 

“Hi, Bucky.”

He turns his head to find Y/N occupying the seat he had previously been observing. One leg crossed over the other, tapping her dangling foot. The sunlight of the mid afternoon makes her hair blow out around her head like a soft halo, and he smiles at her. “Hey, Y/N.”

Her eyes light up when he says her name, and he almost wants to do it again, just to keep that expression on her face. He was lucky enough to know it, let alone say it but he digresses. Pops a few quarters into the machine and begins to load in his clothes.

“Bucky,” She measures, amusement lacing her tone. 

“Hm?” He glances up to find her looking at him like he’d grown another head. But she’s smiling in a soft way and it makes his chest tighten.

“Are you not sorting your laundry?”

His brows crease, and he reassess the clothes in his bag. The only light colored things he owned were socks. So he cocks a brow at her and responds “…no?”

“You separate things by color,” Y/N explains, getting up from her chair and pulling the clothes from his hands. 

(He tries not to think too hard about it. He’s embarrassed himself enough as it is.) 

She dutifully sorts them into reds, blues, greens and denim and then tosses the rest of the black and grey articles into the machine. “When I was a kid, I loved helping my mom on laundry day.”

“Oh?” He realizes with flushed cheeks that this is the most she’s talked to him ever, and he tries to still the flutter in his chest. (It doesn’t work but dammit he _tried_.)

“Yeah. Made me feel like I was helping. We were old school, hung everything up on a line strung from the house to the garage.”

“When I was a kid that was all we had.” _Could almost smell fresh cut grass, hearing his mother singing under her breath as she pinned up the sheets. Playing tag with Rebecca and Steve between the swaying fabric._

“That’s one of the things I don’t like about the city,” Y/N admits. “Nowhere to hang my clothes.” She smiles wistfully, like she’s lost in a memory.

The hum of the machines is a calming backdrop to her musing.

“We had these huge lilac bushes outside, and afterwards everything would smell like them.”

Bucky smiles at her and is about to share a fragmented story of his own when a loud buzz cuts through the air. Y/N scurries over to the machine, throwing open the top door and practically climbing in it to access her clothes. Buck chuckles, and wanders over, leaning against it with his arms crossed over his chest. “Need a hand, doll?” The nickname makes him flinch, but she doesn’t seem to mind, poking her head out and setting her feet back on the ground. “‘S the least I could do.”

She fumbles the wad of clothes in her hands into the bottom tumbler and laughs. “My hero.”

“I wouldn’t go that far…” Bucky mumbles. 

* * *

He spends the rest of the day listening -intently, didn’t wanna miss a word even though he’d never admit to it- to her tell stories from her childhood. He shares what he can, jots down what’s new. He excuses himself to the bathroom, and when he returns he finds Y/N smiling to herself as she repeatedly bullet points thoughts into her notebook. Can just barely see the top margin, where his name lies in bold cursive, decorated around the perimeter with dots and other indiscernible scribbles. Before he can ask about it, she gathers her things and says “Would you like some company on the walk home?”

“Of course,” Bucky fights the urge to break into a full grin. He had enjoyed her company. Today hadn’t been the total bust he had anticipated. 

She chatters idly beside him, about her job, and her projects and her _everything_ and Bucky soaks it in. She feels like a ray of pure white light beside him and his smudged grey soul. And his heart leaps when she waves him off with an ear to ear grin and “Have a good night, Buck.”

For the first time in what he guessed was seventy years, he feels what he thinks could very well be the inklings of a crush permeating his chest. And he doesn’t much mind the nervous tilt to his voice when he says “You too, Y/N.”


	3. {three}

Bucky runs his right hand across his forehead, beads of sweat rolling from his brow to his jaw.

He had pushed himself today. 

Harder than he maybe should have but it was worth it to feel as though he had managed to at least _accomplish **something**_. He toes off his shoes and socks, and trades his track pants for a pair of basketball shorts. The shirt he peels from his body used to be kelly green, but as it hits the floor with a wet _squelch_ he reckons it much more resembles a forest than an Irishman.

He halfheartedly tugs on a deep red shirt and makes his way to the balcony. Perching on the top step, he lights up and takes a hard drag; he can hear Y/N moving around below him. She’s singing along to something. The wind tousles his hair as he considers it. 

Smooth. Jazzy. 

Old school. _Like him_. 

A familiar melody that makes him itch where he sat. Could almost see a memory flickering to the surface. _Sharing a dance with Rebecca. Exaggeratedly waltzing across his Mamă’s living room._

The words seem to roll off his tongue like muscle memory. Like he’d never forgotten in the first place. 

_I got a guy_  
_And he’s tough  
_ _He’s just a gem in the rough–_

Y/N startles.

The lyrics catch in her throat and die there, and he can hear her trying to catch her breath, stifling her erratic heartbeat no doubt. The music is cut off and he’s left with suffocating silence against the backdrop of city life. 

_Good goin’ Barnes,_ he thinks bitterly. He could kick himself. Really.

Her words come out in a breathless huff. “Warn a girl next time, Buck. Nearly gave me a heart attack.” 

Hearing his name makes his heart kick just enough to make him a little light headed. “Sorry,” He curses when his forgotten cigarette has burned to his fingers, the cherry tumbling onto his bare foot. He flicks away the butt in annoyance, brushing away the ash. “Didn’t think ya heard me.”

“You’re a Jazz man?” She asks as he descends the stairs to come upon her sitting cross legged in a chair, string lights wound around the railing giving everything a soft golden glow as the sun began to dip below the skyline.

He chuckles a little, pushing a stray strand of hair behind his ear. “I was born in the Jazz age.” It still feels weird to admit to being a part of history he could only remember in jagged pieces, but it makes Y/N smile, so the waning discomfort is worth it.

“Saw you running today.” Y/N says, smiling bashfully. He finds himself turning red at the tips of his ears. “You worked hard. You want a water?” She meets his eye and her mouth curls upwards and fuck he thinks his heart stopped. And then it starts back up again, pounding so hard against the walls of his chest he fears that he’ll become bruised from the inside out. Or worse yet, that she’ll be able to hear it turning his ribs to splinters in his chest. 

“Sure.” He finds himself smiling back at her and watching her through a curtain of hair and it’s not… wholly unpleasant. It makes his heart lurch in his chest and he absently begins to twirl his hair. 

She looks to her phone screen and taps a few times and suddenly the patio is full of flirting violin and tumbling brass as she disappears into her own apartment. She returns with a bottle of water and a steaming mug that he thinks might be tea. It’s been diluted with so much sugar though that it’s hard for his senses to cut through the sweetness. 

He listens harder to the music and tries to place it. It’s nearly there when she speaks. 

“Rudy Vallee, _I’m just a_ -”

“ _Vegabond lover_.” He nods, smiling. She looked just as beautiful in the glow of the sunset and the fairy lights as she had three days before in the laundry mat. He sees her notebook cracked open down the middle and smiles. Remembers seeing his name scrawled in big, flowy script and surrounded by doodles. “Whatcha writin’?”

“Lists. Helps me keep track’a stuff.”

He nods in agreement.

She sips from her mug as the song turns over to one he doesn’t recognize, but Y/N sings along as her pen rolls across the page, and he’s content with that. Bucky plays idly with his water bottle and enjoys the lapse in conversation. She didn’t push him to talk, and he appreciated that. He eventually bids her goodnight, heart catching in his throat when she looked up and waved. He’s overcome with the urge to thread his fingers through her hair. 

“Try and get some sleep, Barnes.”

“I will.”

Y/N flips idly through some more songs until she lands on one she’s satisfied with as Bucky climbs the stairs. The new one she’s picked is upbeat, but the man on the mic sounds like he’s in pain. She sings loudly into the night, and Bucky finds himself turning to look at her before he heads inside. She was dancing. With her arms out and her legs going as quickly as she could manage them and Bucky’s whole being surges with adoration.

Maybe a shower would clear his head. 

* * *

He awakens the next morning to find the sky dreary and overcast, a delicate fog hanging across the city like a blanket. In a fragile font across his glass balcony door he finds a proposition.


	4. {Four}

_Breakfast? (: -Y/N_

  


The question stares at him like it’s going to bite him in the ass and he’s been considering it for the better part of ten minutes. 

  


“Sam?”

Bucky has the phone pressed between his shoulder and his ear as he tugs on a dark pair of jeans, anxiety coursing through him like a flooded river. Too fast, too strong and he can’t seem to quell it no matter how desperately he tries to. 

  


“What’s up?”

  


He knows it’s early, and Sam had probably been running. He hopes he’s not being too much of a burden. (The more rational part of him said that, no, he wasn’t, he just needed a bit of a boost, and Sam was always good at curbing the Mac truck of doubt that sometimes got the better of him.)

  


“Got a problem,” Bucky palms his night pants, digging for his smokes. He pops one between his lips and heads outside.

  


Silence. Can almost see Sam raising his brows. It’s an unspoken invitation. _Go on._

  


“My, uh.” Pause. Exhale. “My neighbor. That girl, I was telling you about? She asked me to breakfast. I’ve been spending some time with her. She’s nice. And, fuck, she’s. She’s so damn pretty, Sam.” Bucky looks out at the city and the hazy sunrise and realizes he’s been doing this a lot lately. Living in the light. Instead of being a restless night owl. It makes his insides twist in a way he can’t pin. 

  


“So what’s the problem?”

  


He thinks for a moment, nicotine scorching the walls of his chest as he takes a deep drag. “What if... what if I’m...”

  


“C’mon, man, don’t be so hard on yourself. You really think this girl would ask you out if she thought you weren’t a decent guy?” 

  


“Guess not.” Bucky says around his cigarette, rubbing the back of his neck.

  


“Keep me posted, Barnes.”

  


The line clicks and he’s left with cars whirring and birds singing. 

  


He wouldn’t pass up this opportunity, not by a long shot. But doubt had begun to creep up his spine late last night before sleep had overthrown him. Y/N was _good_. She was kind and smart and what was he? 

  


Maybe he shouldn’t go. He shouldn’t continue to expose her to himself and his issues. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. But in order to not do that he needed to curb that thought and come back to it later when she wasn’t waiting on him. He hastily pulls on his shoes, and is contemplating leaping over the railing from his balcony to hers when there’s a soft knock at his front door. 

  


_“Bucky? It’s Y/N.”_

  


His heart picks up the pace and goddamn it had been ages since he had last been this nervous, he was sure of it. 

  


_His heart hammered in his chest, rehearsing his line in his head. He was sixteen, flowers clutched in his hands as he waited for the soft spoken Irish girl that lived down the way. They had been stuck at the hip ever since he had saved her from a group of roughneck boys who had stolen her rucksack and were tossing it high above her head, spilling her books. His knuckles still bloomed in shades of purple where he had connected them to jaws. He scratches a hand through his hair, beaming as the door swung open._

  


Y/N looks more beautiful than anyone had the right to be this early in the morning, soft cotton sweatshirt proclaiming she belonged to some college across the country. She’s smiling, taking in his thousand watt grin and returning it ten fold. 

  


“Mornin’, Sunshine!” She chirps and he has to cough into his fist to mask his less than flattering choke at the endearment. 

  


“Mornin’,” Buck nods, tucking stray hair behind his ear as he leans into his doorway. “So, breakfast, huh? Where we headed?” He snags his keys off of the hook near the lock, and turns to lock the door. 

  


She simply scrunched her features in excitement, hand fiddling near her side. “If I tell you, it’ll ruin the surprise!” She nudges him with her elbow and motions towards the stairs.

  


The friendly contact makes his skin feel like it’s on fire, and he cocks a brow at her. “Oh lord, what’re you draggin’ me into?”

  


She just grins tucking her notebook closer to her chest. A pen sticks out of the top, and her free hand swings carefree as she bounds down the stairs and out the doors. He aches to reach out and take it as he catches up with her on the sidewalk. But instead he buries his twitching hand in his front pocket, thumb playing with the heavy stitching. 

  


“So, Buck,” She begins, walking backwards so she could face him as she spoke. “You—” She stumbles over an unseen dip in the sidewalk, and Bucky’s metal hand darts out, fingers curling into her sleeve as he yanks her towards him. She’s nearly flush against his chest and he expects her to shove away from him once her feet are beneath her, but. She doesn’t. She looks up at him, and despite the shades of embarrassment that flit across her features, she laughs. It’s loud and unabashed and he finds himself chuckling with her. 

  


“A’right, clumsy. Watch where y’r walkin’. I don’t wanna have ta give ya breakfast in the hospital.”

  


“Aw,” She jabs at his side, putting a little bit of breathing room between them, “you’d really do that for me?”

  


“‘Course I would.” Bucky realizes his left hand is still wrapped around her wrist, and drops it quickly. She gathers the spilled contents of her notebook, and her smile turns bashful. 

  


She picks up where she left off as they continue their trek. Except she’s walking beside him now. So close he could make out the smell of lilacs every time the wind carded through her hair. “You ever been to Simon’s?” 

  


“Can’t say I have,” Bucky’s features knit together as he tries to recall where that was. When he comes up short, though, it doesn’t bother him like it normally would. 

  


After a few more blocks, and idle chatter, they round the corner and he spies a large storefront advertising a pancake breakfast in support of _Crestwood High’s Screaming Ladies Softball!_

  


“ _Screaming Ladies_?” He questions, a smile flirting at the edge of his lips. 

  


“Oh, jeez.” Y/N scrunches her face, apology written across her face as she peers up at him. “I thought this was tomorrow. ‘M sorry, Bucky.”

  


“What’re you sorry for?”

  


“I guess. I just. I dunno,” Y/N begins waving her free hand wildly. She was nervous. She talked with her hands the most when she was nervous. “I know you don’t really do crowds, or anything and I just thought that—“

  


“Hey, hey,” He snatches her waving hand from the air to get her attention. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.” He feels a pinch in his chest at the thought of the loud noise of the diner, but he’s quick to quash it when he realizes that she had remembered his admission of social anxiety. “Thank you, though, Y/N.”

  


He releases her hand near her side, and nudges her softly. “C’mon, now, you promised me grub. Can’t drag a man outta bed for pancakes and not follow through.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing Bucky, I would love to see your feedback!


End file.
